Historically, an area of great concern to government and industry has been the identification of high-risk procurements. An example of a high-risk procurement may be paying an exuberant amount of money per item, such as $150.00 per screwdriver, when these items may be purchased off-the-shelf for a fraction of the cost.
High-risk procurements have a high probability of outside scrutiny, and potentially represent a risk for fraud, waste and abuse. High-risk procurements in the past have resulted in negative publicity and investigations that consume considerable leadership time and taxpayer dollars.
Procurements may be monitored based on the dollar value of each procurement. This type of monitoring has made sense in a procurement environment where thousands of procurements pass through the procurement process to award each day. However, when considering past procurements that have resulted in extensive outside scrutiny and consumed considerable leadership time to address them, not all of these procurement actions have fit the high dollar value model. For example, post-procurement accountability auditing may uncover a $20 procurement for an ice cube tray. Because the $20 value is not a high dollar amount, it may not be flagged by the typical monitoring process when the procurement occurred. In an environment where there are thousands of procurements, these type of high-risk procurements may be vast and result in a significant amount of unnecessary expenditures.